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Whats ultimately going to happen here? Will this all be brushed under the carpet eventually with a fewer lesser known douchebags scapegoated and locked up? Will it bring down Trump? Tear apart his family? Will it cost or embarrass the GOP for any length of time?

I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....

The only way that could fly is if the lawyer acted as a relay between them. So father and son never spoke directly. The lawyer also had to be "their" lawyer, most plausibly by being paid to represent both.

This is a fishy invocation in my opinion. Perhaps even enough to rile up the committee. Kind of a "how dumb do you think we are" reason.

I'm quite sure Don Jr. will have obliged here and put “Smoking gun, we will never get caught, harhar!” in the subject header of some email.

But seriously, we should wait and see what the documents say, and not overhype things. The number of documents does not necessarily indicate anything. We don't know what charges Mueller is going for at this point.

I was alluding to the amount reflecting a lot of hours of man-power to examine, since some people on here seem to think that nothing has been accomplished in the past 9 months.

Assuming their complaints are genuine.

Sure, and I of course also work under the assumption that Mueller has a game plan which will reveal itself to us only much later. I've seen some conservative commentators being overly optimistic (in my estimation), just judging the severity of Mueller's case against the Trump administration by the severity of the charges leveled against Flynn, Manafort and Papadopoulos. I don't subscribe to that, but it is useful to temper our expectations a little so as to not get caught up in hysteria. With the Trump administration, that is quite a struggle, I admit.

Bannon’s appearance Tuesday before the House panel perplexed and frustrated investigators, according to people familiar with the session. He arrived with no documents, saying that if lawmakers wanted emails and other communications, they were likely to be available from other witnesses.

And he refused to answer questions about conversations he had with Trump after leaving the administration or communications he had with officials outside government about people serving in the White House.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said that Bannon’s attorney, William Burck, told the committee that while Bannon himself was willing to speak with lawmakers and investigators, he could not answer questions because the White House told him not to respond.

“This was effectively a gag order by the White House preventing this witness from answering almost any question concerning his time in the transition or the administration,” Schiff said.

“The scope of this assertion of privilege, if that’s what it is, is breathtaking. It goes well beyond anything we have seen in this investigation,” he added. “If the White House is permitted to maintain that kind of gag rule on a witness, no congressional investigation could ever be effective. So this obviously can’t stand.”

Faced with Bannon’s resistance, Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), who is running the panel’s probe, said that the committee elected to serve him with a subpoena during the interview.

Bannon’s attorney consulted with the White House after the panel issued the subpoena, but “the White House effectively doubled down on the gag rule,” Schiff said.

Conaway and Schiff said the White House never formally invoked executive privilege for Bannon, and Conaway added that he was not aware of the White House invoking privilege with any witness who has appeared before the committee in its Russia probe.

1. I was afraid Bannon might do this 'ultimate' show of loyalty after pretty much being exiled from conservative power circles.

2. I have no understanding why the WH would issue such a broad gag order, other than to try and set a precedent for future witnesses?

3. Given my pessimism regarding the good faith effort of the House committee investigation I also surprised the GOP members were angry enough to subpoena him on the spot.

I don't have enough solid information to really speculate further.

Edit: I should add they spent 12 hours with him and supposedly he answered virtually nothing after the early going. I don't understand that, either. 12 hours of getting him on record for what he wouldn't answer.

2. I have no understanding why the WH would issue such a broad gag order, other than to try and set a precedent for future witnesses?

That doesn't strike me as that weird, given who is in charge: I don't think Trump really has a concept (or cares) about the limits of his power and separation of powers. If he can invoke executive privilege and the House Republicans let him get away with it, then this is what he will do. AFAIK Trump had members of his White House sign NDAs as well (which seem to be in contradiction with the Presidential Records Act).

Originally Posted by The Final Dakar

3. Given my pessimism regarding the good faith effort of the House committee investigation I also surprised the GOP members were angry enough to subpoena him on the spot.

That was indeed surprising. Not a lot of love lost between Bannon, Breitbart and “mainstream” Republicans (aka RINOs on breitbart.com). But we should see how serious they really are: will they stand up to Trump or not?

As lawmakers in the closed-door session probed Bannon’s time working for Trump, his attorney got on the phone with the White House counsel’s office, relaying questions and asking what Bannon could tell Congress, according to a White House official and a second person familiar with the interview.

The answer was a broad one. Bannon couldn’t discuss anything to do with his work on the presidential transition or later in the White House itself.

His counsel was literally running back on questions to ask the WH what to do. The WH had requested for one of their lawyers to sit in on the interview, but the committee denied the request.

The White House believed it had an agreement with the House Intelligence Committee to limit questions for Steve Bannon only to events on the presidential campaign, and not during the ousted former chief strategist's time in the Trump administration, an official told CNBC.

The committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, said the White House did not inform him or his fellow party members on the panel about such an agreement.

"That was never conveyed to the minority," Schiff said Tuesday night. "And I think it came as quite a surprise to our entire committee frankly, apart from the majority staffer that was involved in that communication."

At that point, House Intelligence Committee Republicans and Democrats joined forces to issue Bannon a subpoena on the spot to compel his testimony. It is not clear what, if any, questions Bannon answered after that. A Reuters report said the former top Trump aide refused to comply with the subpoena.

Despite the attempt to limit questioning of Bannon, the White House official insisted the administration is not asserting executive privilege. "We're not asserting anything," the official said. "They need to discuss it with us. There's a process that's existed for decades."

They're still playing schroedinger's executive privilege.

"It is the most tortured analysis of executive privilege I have ever heard of," Gowdy said on Fox News. "Executive privilege now covers things before you become the chief executive — which is just mind-numbing and there is no legal support for it."

Trump acted to limit Bannon’s testimony based on legal advice provided by Uttam Dhillon, a deputy White House counsel, who concluded that the administration might have legitimate executive privilege claims to restrict testimony by Bannon and other current and former aides to the president, according to these same sources.

But Dhillon has also concluded that Bannon and other current and former Trump administration officials do not have legitimate claims to executive privilege when it comes to providing information or testimony to special counsel Robert Mueller, according to the sources.

Which makes me wonder what the ****ing point of this exercise is.

"We have additional questions," said Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas. "The subpoena remains in effect. And we have additional questions we don't have the answers to yet. We're going to work to get those answers."

It's not over. Hope Hicks was supposed to testify tomorrow but its been post-poned because they expect the same deal. Lewendowski appeared today and refused to answer some Qs but was not subpoenaed.

Included in the questions Lewandowski would not answer was: "Did you have a conversation with the president of the United States within the last 24 hours where you discussed your testimony?" said Schiff.

L-O-L

It doesn't strike me as wise for Trump to be interfering in the House investigations. Some might construe it as... obstruction, perhaps?

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon drew bipartisan ire on Capitol Hill Thursday by refusing to answer a range of questions from the House Intelligence Committee, with lawmakers vowing to take more drastic steps to compel his testimony.

During his roughly three-hour appearance behind closed doors, Mr. Bannon said he was willing to address only 25 prewritten questions about his time in government and the transition between administrations.

“There were 25 questions that the White House authorized him to answer,” said Rep. Mike Conaway, a Texas Republican running the panel’s Russia investigation. “He answered each of those. He wouldn’t go beyond those questions in any of his answers. And that’s frustrating. We have further steps to take, and we’ll be taking them.”

Mr. Conaway said he would be discussing the matter of Mr. Bannon’s testimony further with House Speaker Paul Ryan and others to determine the next steps.

At issue in Mr. Bannon’s refusal to answer questions is the doctrine of executive privilege, or the right of a presidential administration to shield some internal deliberations from outside scrutiny in the interest of promoting candid advice to the president.

The White House sent a letter to the panel in advance of Thursday’s hearing outlining some of its concerns about Mr. Bannon’s testimony, according to people familiar with the matter. But Mr. Bannon refused to answer questions on other topics beyond his time in the White House, according to the panel’s top Democrat.
…
Mr. Bannon “went so far to review as to refuse to answer questions about conversations he had after he left the administration and with people who played no role in the administration, had never been in the administration,” Mr. Schiff said. “There is no plausible claim of privilege that could apply to those circumstances.”

1. Trial by chamber. If guilty, they can detain him ... until this session of Congress ends. No longer.
2. Refer to US Attorneys office. Contempt of Congress is a criminal offense since 1857. If the US Attorneys office acts, and Bannon were convicted: penalties are 1-12 months in jail, $100-$1000 fine.
3. Have Senate legal office file civil case against Bannon. Court will order him to comply with Senate. If he still doesn't, Contempt of Court applies. The judge can jail him indefinitely until he complies.

The Justice Department’s special counsel announced a sweeping indictment Friday of a notorious Russian group of Internet trolls — charging 13 individuals and three companies with a long-running scheme to criminally interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The Internet Research Agency, based in St. Petersburg, was named in the indictment as the hub of an ambitious effort to trick Americans online into following and promoting Russian-fed propaganda that pushed 2016 voters toward then-Republican candidate Donald Trump and away from Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

The indictment charges that the Russian efforts began in 2014, when three of the Russian conspirators visited 10 states, gathering intelligence about U.S. politics. Officials say that as the operation progressed, the suspects also engaged in extensive online conversations with Americans who became unwitting tools of the Russian efforts. The indictment does not accuse the Russian government of involvement in the scheme, nor does it claim that it succeeded in swaying any votes.

I guess we can call Russian interference official, for the doubters.

The 37-page indictment includes some startling accusations against the election trolls, including that when news broke in September that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was investigating their activity, one of them wrote: “We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke). So I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with the colleagues.” The person, named as Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, allegedly added: “I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people.”

Yes, they emailed about working around an FBI bust

In a related move, prosecutors announced that a Santa Paula, Calif., man had pleaded guilty Monday in Washington to identity fraud, admitting that he made tens of thousands of dollars by creating hundreds of bank accounts, often using stolen identities. Richard Pinedo, 28, sold the accounts to unidentified offshore users, apparently including suspects connected to the Russia probe.

Some analysis:

The indictment alleges facts that support charges of federal campaign finance law violations—such as the prohibition on foreign national contributions—but does not charge any such offenses. This is clearly not for want of evidence, since the indictment sets out in considerable detail the millions in foreign national spending to influence the 2016 election. Yet Bob Mueller omitted any direct charge for violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Instead, the indictment builds the campaign finance issues into a conspiracy to defraud the United States—it alleges that the Russians conspired to obstruct the capacity of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to enforce the law. The act of obstruction was a failure to report their illegal expenditures. If the FEC did not know about the expenditures, it could not enforce the law.

Mueller and his team may have concluded that straight statutory campaign finance allegations rest on too much untested ground and would complicate what may well be the next phase of their investigation. This consideration would not affect the foreign national side of the case: Foreign nationals are plainly prohibited from spending in the manner detailed in the indictment. But how the law reaches American co-conspirators is less certain, and the special counsel’s theory of the case, pleading the campaign finance aspect of the case through conspiracy-to-defraud, may allow more securely for the prosecution of American actors.

In other words, if Mueller’s case for campaign finance violations affected only Russians, there would be no obvious reason to exclude Federal Election Campaign Act violations from the indictment. Russians spent substantial sums to influence an election, as expressly laid out in the charging document, and this is an unambiguous violation of federal law. If, however, Mueller possesses evidence of Americans’ complicity in these violations, he may have decided on a different theory of the campaign finance case that more reliably sweeps in U.S. citizen misconduct.

Mueller accused the men of lying on their income-tax returns and conspiring to commit bank fraud to get loans. The indictment was filed in federal court in Virginia — a technical requirement because that was where the accused filed their tax returns.

A court filing indicates that prosecutors initially sought to combine the new charges with the preexisting indictment in federal court in Washington, but Manafort declined to agree, leading to the possibility of separate trials in neighboring jurisdictions.

The new indictment offers a more detailed portrait of what prosecutors say was a multiyear scheme by Manafort and Gates to use their income from working for a Ukrainian political party to buy properties, evade taxes and support a lavish lifestyle even after their business connections in Kiev evaporated.

“Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work. From approximately 2006 through the present, Manafort and Gates engaged in a scheme to hide income from United States authorities, while enjoying the use of the money,” the indictment charges.

Manafort is innocent of the new charges, his spokesman Jason Maloni said in a statement Thursday.

Alex van der Zwaan, a former associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, admitted in court in Washington that he misled investigators about the last time he talked with Gates, who was indicted in October with Manafort over their consulting work in Ukraine. Gates is reportedly considering cooperating with Mueller.
…
In pleading guilty to false statements, van der Zwaan admitted that he had conversations with Gates and someone in Ukraine that he later tried to hide from U.S. investigators. The case also shows that Mueller can secure a conviction against a non-U.S. citizen. Van der Zwaan, born in Brussels, is a Dutch citizen.

Van der Zwaan, according to prosecutors, had a hand in a report that Skadden produced in 2012 that largely defended the prosecution and conviction of the country’s former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. The report defied the view held by the U.S. and the European Union that the case against her was politically motivated.
…
According to prosecutors, van der Zwaan, Gates and Person A talked by phone and encrypted messages about their fears that Ukrainian prosecutors might bring criminal charges over the report.

Gates sent documents to van der Zwaan that included a preliminary criminal complaint, U.S. authorities said. Van der Zwaan then called Person A in Ukraine, and discussed whether a former Ukrainian minister of justice, Skadden and Manafort might be charged there. He also called a senior Skadden partner, and later talked to Gates. He secretly recorded some of these conversations, according to prosecutors.

However, questioned by U.S. authorities on Nov. 3, 2017, days after Manafort and Gates were indicted, van der Zwaan told investigators that his last contact with Gates was an innocuous text message in mid-August 2016. He last talked with Person A in 2014, he told them. Van der Zwaan also tried to minimize his role in producing the Tymoshenko report, prosecutors said.

Van der Zwaan also deleted and failed to produce emails sought by the special counsel and his firm, prosecutors said.